Md. Abdul Chowdhury and his teammates never did get their virtual spaceship safely to Kepler-438b, an exoplanet situated hundreds of light years from Earth.
But all the hours they spent trying certainly weren’t wasted.
Whether they were able to conquer the difficult spaceship challenge or not, about 50 first-year engineering students at the University of Waterloo came away from a recent three-day event with valuable new technical skills and experience collaborating on complex problems in groups of up to 16 people.
A screen grab shows one of the IDEAs Clinic coding projects by engineering students in progress during the three-day activity.
“Teamwork is key to everything in industry, so it was great for us to get out of our comfort zones now to help prepare us for the long run,” said Chowdhury, 19.
That was exactly what organizers had in mind when they tweaked an existing hands-on activity to engage and involve electrical and computer engineering students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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